The lexer is responsible for providing tokens to the parser. The project comes with two lexers: PhpParser\Lexer and PhpParser\Lexer\Emulative. The latter is an extension of the former, which adds the ability to emulate tokens of newer PHP versions and thus allows parsing of new code on older versions.

This documentation discusses options available for the default lexers and explains how lexers can be extended.

Lexer options

The two default lexers accept an $options array in the constructor. Currently only the 'usedAttributes' option is supported, which allows you to specify which attributes will be added to the AST nodes. The attributes can then be accessed using $node->getAttribute(), $node->setAttribute(), $node->hasAttribute() and $node->getAttributes() methods. A sample options array:

The attributes used in this example match the default behavior of the lexer. The following attributes are supported:

comments: Array of PhpParser\Comment or PhpParser\Comment\Doc instances, representing all comments that occurred between the previous non-discarded token and the current one. Use of this attribute is required for the $node->getDocComment() method to work. The attribute is also needed if you wish the pretty printer to retain comments present in the original code.

startLine: Line in which the node starts. This attribute is required for the $node->getLine() to work. It is also required if syntax errors should contain line number information.

endLine: Line in which the node ends.

startTokenPos: Offset into the token array of the first token in the node.

endTokenPos: Offset into the token array of the last token in the node.

startFilePos: Offset into the code string of the first character that is part of the node.

endFilePos: Offset into the code string of the last character that is part of the node.

Using token positions

The token offset information is useful if you wish to examine the exact formatting used for a node. For example the AST does not distinguish whether a property was declared using public or using var, but you can retrieve this information based on the token position:

The startLexing() method is invoked with the source code that is to be lexed (including the opening tag) whenever the parse() method of the parser is called. It can be used to reset state or preprocess the source code or tokens.

The getTokens() method returns the current token array, in the usual token_get_all() format. This method is not used by the parser (which uses getNextToken()), but is useful in combination with the token position attributes.

The handleHaltCompiler() method is called whenever a T_HALT_COMPILER token is encountered. It has to return the remaining string after the construct (not including ();).

The getNextToken() method returns the ID of the next token (as defined by the Parser::T_* constants). If no more tokens are available it must return 0, which is the ID of the EOF token. Furthermore the string content of the token should be written into the by-reference $value parameter (which will then be available as $n in the parser).

Attribute handling

The other two by-ref variables $startAttributes and $endAttributes define which attributes will eventually be assigned to the generated nodes: The parser will take the $startAttributes from the first token which is part of the node and the $endAttributes from the last token that is part of the node.

E.g. if the tokens `T_FUNCTION T_STRING ... '{' ... '}'constitute a node, then the$startAttributesfrom the T_FUNCTIONtoken will be taken and the$endAttributesfrom the'}'` token.

An application of custom attributes is storing the original formatting of literals: The parser does not retain information about the formatting of integers (like decimal vs. hexadecimal) or strings (like used quote type or used escape sequences). This can be remedied by storing the original value in an attribute: